


go on and fill my lungs with light

by weaslayyy



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-28
Updated: 2016-01-28
Packaged: 2018-05-16 19:46:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5838577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weaslayyy/pseuds/weaslayyy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five ways Amy Santiago planned to tell Jake Peralta she loved him: Romantic Cruise Stylez. Oh, and the one way it eventually worked out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	go on and fill my lungs with light

**a prologue.**

Amy Santiago is five years old the first time she imagines falling in love. She’s stuck at home with the flu, and her mother has brought her a bowl of chicken noodle soup to drink while they watch daytime soaps together. The two main characters are sitting in a hospital waiting room, holding hands while they wait to see whether or not the girl is pregnant. Amy watches as the boy takes a breath and turns, bringing his hands to frame his girlfriend’s face.

“ _Marcia_ ,” he whispers, “ _whatever the test results are, whether you’re pregnant or not.... I want you to know that I love you. I love you more than anything. I want to spend the rest of my life loving you, and nothing will ever change that, I swear_.”

“Terrible,” Mama groans, wrinkling her nose. “A hospital is no place to declare love like that for the first time, _especially_ when it’s your own fault the girl’s pregnant!”

Amy slurps her soup and giggles. “Mama,” she asks after a moment, “when did you and Papi first say ‘I love you’?”

Mama smiles, turning towards Amy and grabbing the remote to switch the tv off. “Well,” she says, “Your Papi was quite the romantic. We had been dating for a few months: going out to nice dinners and dancing, he’d taken me on picnics and walks through the parks and to movies I liked, and decided that he loved me--”

“Did you love him back?”

“Of course, mija,” Mama says, kissing Amy’s forehead. “To be honest, I would have said it first if he hadn’t beaten me to it.” She pulls away. “He took me out to my favorite spot, a park bench next to a beautiful garden, and just as the sun was setting over the horizon he whispered ‘te amo’ in my ear.”

Mama looks at Amy and brings up her hand to brush a strand of hair off of Amy’s slightly damp forehead. “Oh Amy,” she sighs, “I hope _you_ have a story like that someday.”

And Amy Santiago, all of five years old and slightly feverish looks up at her Mama, looks at all of the love in her eyes and makes herself a promise.

“I will,” Amy says. “I’ll have a story just as perfect as yours.”

* * *

**one.**

_Mama, we were on a cruise and it was wonderful: I told him I loved him while we could hear the ocean, and oh the view! The view was so beautiful. It was perfect, Mama. Just perfect._

Amy isn’t quite sure when she first realized that she was in love with Jake: one morning she opened her eyes and realized that there was something filling in the cavities of her lungs, a density that she couldn’t explain beyond a certainty that Jake was causing it. Amy’s chest felt full of something, and all she could think to name it was love.

Amy Santiago is in love with Jake. Her only issue, is that she can’t figure out how to tell him.

She has a few problems: firstly, that she isn’t sure that he loves her back. There are some signals that he might: for one, he’s brought up the fact that they’re in love a couple times at the precinct, but mostly when he’s panicking and can’t think of an excuse. So she isn’t completely sure, and she definitely doesn’t want to pressure Jake into saying something that he might not mean.

Of course, even if he _is_ in love with her, he might not be ready to say it. Amy knows that he has trouble with emotion, and she’s tried to accommodate that in their relationship: there are a million ways that he shows he cares even if he can’t always verbalize it, and that’s _fine_. Really, it is.

It’s just ... well, she’d prefer if he said it back. So she waits. And waits, and waits, and waits for weeks until she’s almost 90 percent sure that Jake would tell her he loved her if she said it first, and she knows that she’ll have to say it first. Considering how the last person he’d said the words to had dumped him that very night, a positive response to her own affirmation of love is pretty much the best thing Amy can hope for.

So she’s going to tell him, if she can only figure out _how_. Then, Jake comes running into her apartment waving an envelope and yelling about how he’s won free cruise tickets, and won’t she pleeeeaaasse come on a week long super sexy vacation with him, the best boyfriend in the universe?

“Usually I’d bring Boyle,” he says with a smirk, “But now I have you to take places, and I won’t ever have to eat his disgusting food again!”

Amy walks up to him and throws her arms around his neck, kissing him softly. That weight is back in her lungs again, solidifying as she breathes in the scent of the detergent she bought for him to use when washing his clothes.

The ocean will make for a nice backdrop to her story, she thinks.

“Of course, Jake,” she says. “I’d love to.”

* * *

**two.**

_Mama, there was a party, right? A ship launch party and I told him to wear some niceish clothes and we went to the party for a little while but then I asked if maybe we could go on a walk, so we went on a walk. And there was a place I found on the map, this little piece of the ship where I knew we wouldn’t be disturbed, and I took him there and we looked at the water and talked a little and I just looked at him and whispered that I loved him. It was perfect, Mama, just perfect._

Amy soon realizes that, like most things in her life, declarations of love are things best planned, and so she does. She finds the most detailed map of the ship they’ll be on and gets on the phone with five different representatives, trying to locate the most secluded yet picturesque area that will be easily accessible from the room the party is in.

It’s a purely selfish choice: she doesn’t want to spend any more time stressing about this than she has to, and she can at least make him wear niceish clothes if she says they’re going to a party. Knowing Jake he’ll want to document this important relationship milestone, and she has this faint feeling that tells her she’ll want to keep these pictures, that she’ll show them years down the road, maybe display them in her office when she’s made Captain, point them out to their childr--

These pictures will be important, okay? She’ll be damned if she isn’t looking her best.

However, Amy Santiago is also an excellent planner, so she makes sure to find at least three other events per day that she could use, just in case her first one doesn’t work out.

Amy might be a romantic, but she’s also a realist. Ten years of partnership with Jake Peralta have taught her that her first, or even her tenth plan might not always work out. She is prepared for everything: it’s one of Jake’s favorite things about her.

 

......Amy Santiago is _not_ prepared for the Pontiac _fucking_ Bandit.

* * *

  **three.**

_Mama, we were in our rooms and I had ordered a special meal full of food Jake and I liked to eat together, and a bottle of champagne to celebrate. Oh, I stressed about what exactly we would have, but I think I managed to strike the proper balance between what we both like. I even bought a pack of those sour candies Captain Holt gave him and brought them for dessert. After we finished, I took his hand and I told him about how much he means to me, and I went through the list of everything I like best about him. And then we kissed, and I said that I loved him when we broke apart. It was perfect, Mama, just perfect._

Jake spends most of their first night aboard muttering under his breath about Doug Judy and Pontiacs and how much he wants his gun. At some point he’d actually managed to find an office center and then proceeded to steal an entire ream of printer paper, which he was now using to construct an evidence board against Doug Judy.

So far he has: “has tricked me innumerable times before,” “is too charming,” “sings ~~good~~ terrible,” and “is my arch-enemy.”

Amy cancels her dinner order after the second hour, and slips outside to throw away the sheets of her nine page double-sided single spaced speech, which in detail describes everything she likes best about Jake and how much their relationship has meant to her and some of her thoughts on their future maybe. There’s no way that she’s ever going to risk Jake finding the pages at any point of the rest of their lives, especially if he sees the speech before she manages to give it.

It’s alright, she made sure to memorize a general outline for just this type of scenario.

So, instead, Amy spends the night brainstorming Doug Judy’s possible motives, and planning out ways he might escape so that they can make sure to stop him. At around 12, she pulls out the bag of sour candy and offers them to Jake, and they manage to finish all the candies off by three.

(He lets her have the last one, and she tries to imprint the words ‘I love your generosity’ on his lower lip)

* * *

**four.**

_Mama, so you know how I like crosswords, right? And I saw that there was a crossword puzzle activity and I just knew I had to take my shot, you know? So I got this themed one done, and I gave it to the activities coordinator for Jake to fill out and all the answers are the names from our Perp Hall of fame, and you see the thing is together they made up the last one: 21 across. I love you. It was perfect, Mama, just perfect._

Amy’s crossword is sitting in its plastic pre-laminating sleeve at the bottom of her suitcase, underneath the stacks of folded blouses Jake knows better than to disturb. The two of them have an unconventional relationship, but telling Jake that she loves him while he’s trying to catch the Pontiac Bandit seems like a really bad decision for multiple reasons.

So, she ignores the eyes of the activity coordinator who she’s been talking with for a week and picks up three copies of the crossword the cruise provided. Jake and Doug Judy are arguing, and Amy works her way methodically through the clues, writing her answers with a pencil she’d brought with her.

The theme turns out to be “boats,” and Amy finishes it in 32 minutes, which might be a personal record.

Jake kisses her nose and brings her a potato-skin margarita. She tries not to imagine a future where she can say she loves him when he hands it over.

* * *

**five.**

_Mama, so...the day didn’t really turn out like I expected but it’s fine. It was totally unexpected, you know? And it was kind of nice, to be working a case with Jake again, especially after that last one.... I guess it reminded me of all the little things I loved about him, and especially some of the things that I don’t! I just, I love him so much, and it was such a hard day for him and I thought that maybe we could just lie down and enjoy some shrimp, just like he’d wanted. I figured that now more than ever Jake needed someone to tell him how amazing he was, and that he was loved, so when we were cuddling after we finished eating I just kind of turned towards him and looked right into his eyes. He has such beautiful eyes, you know? And I brought my hand up to brush against his cheekbone and I said I loved him, that I loved him more than I ever thought was possible. It was perfect, Mama, just perfect._

This time, Amy’s sure that everything will work according to plan: Doug Judy’s gone, and there’s nothing Jake enjoys more than the opportunity to eat and cuddle, except maybe sex, which they can also do later tonight.

Amy’s going to look Jake in the eyes and say she loves him, and hopefully he’ll say it back and they’ll both smile and kiss and she won’t have to filter through the haze of her happiness anymore, won’t have to press her lips together when he does something so lovely that she feels a lump develop in the back of her throat.

She loves him. Amy Santiago’s in love with him, and she’s finally going to be able to say it.

Except apparently not, because apparently Jake enjoys making her happy more than eating shrimp on their bed. Amy’s feeling her chest tighten again, everything buckling under the incredible weight of her love for Jake Peralta, her favorite person in the universe.

They go dancing, and if she tosses him the guayabera her mother gave as a gag gift, well, no one has to know.

* * *

**and the one time she didn’t.**

In the end, Amy isn’t really sure how she couldn’t have seen it coming. After all, their relationship never really seemed to happen according to plan. Even when she tried to account for that in said plan.

Jake and Amy go salsa dancing, and all she can think of is the last time they did this, two years and a lifetime ago. Amy can’t believe she hadn’t been able to recognize that look on his face the last time, the same one he’s making that says he adores her, that he’d sacrifice eating shrimp in bed if she wanted him to.  

How much time had they wasted, she wonders, falling in and out of love like that?

And just like that, she knows.

Amy’s spent years believing that certain words have power, that telling someone you loved them for the first time was supposed to be an event you could package and pass down to your children. She’s been waiting for the perfect moment, when she could say the words and have them whispered back to her, all set to the rhythm of a love song she might have heard as a child.

But love doesn’t have to be like that. Love is simple, and kind. Gentle, in a way she never really expected, to be honest. Amy feels like her love for Jake could fill up an entire universe if she wanted it to, but for now she’s content to let it color every smile she gives him, shade every glance, soften every touch. It’s not an event, but rather a state of being that she wants to acknowledge, even if he might not be able to say the same.

He makes her _so_ happy, and she wants to tell him that because her love is generous. It doesn’t rely on reciprocation, even though it might be strengthened by it. Amy looks at Jake in front of her, memorizes the features of his face, the warmth of his eyes, and especially the slight grin on his lips.

Amy doesn’t have a plan, doesn’t have a speech, doesn’t have anything but the love flowing inside her veins, filling up all the spaces she hadn’t noticed were hollow.

She loves him. And so, she tells him.

_It was perfect, Mama, just perfect._

**Author's Note:**

> umm... hello? hi! erm, i know i probably should be sticking to you know my whole drinking tea conversations (and....im still in the middle of extended pining a la season 2) but i couldn't get this idea out of my head! i feel like she would have atleast done SOME planning, but the beauty of such a simple scene at the end is that it was natural and, well, ~light and breezy~ (it wasn't not really i just wanted to use that phrase). I just got this idea and i had to write it down. i have no idea if anyone will like it (i have very little faith in my self or my abilities it seems because im constantly apologizing for my work but oh well) 
> 
> disclaimer? i've never been in romantic stylez love before, but i do love my friends and family and i feel like (hope that) romantic love will be kind of like how i feel for them? i have no idea at all tbh what am i doing writing about people in love
> 
> anyways, all of that aside i hope you liked it! any feedback at all would make me sO so happy, but if not that's alright too! (IM literally running on pure happiness from yesterday so im a little more excitable and verbose than usual) thank you for reading!


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